painting cabinets

I think I might understand why mothers will go through the pain of childbirth once and choose to do it again. After painting my kitchen cabinets, I feel like I can relate. Because those two things are extremely similar and definitely equal amounts of pain. I feel like a survivor. These were my kitchen cabinets. I don’t have anything against wood or brown cabinetry, actually I like it a lot. My cabinets, however, were is pretty bad shape.

Around every knob, there was a worn away patch were you could see that these were not in fact made of wood at all. They were also very dark in a house that tends to be rather dark. In a townhouse, we don’t have many windows. The kitchen is the room that gets the most light and it still looked dreary thanks to these cabinets.

I decided to do something about it. I got my handy dandy (brand new) toolbox and got to work. I just received this toolbox from my dad and step-mom for Christmas. It included this screwdriver, and it was a godsend for this project! Removing all the hardware would have been the biggest chore without it.

First, I removed all the doors. Let’s not judge the content of my cabinets, ok friends? I’m 24. I do what I want. We sanded everything down with a sanding block and medium grit sandpaper. After sanding, we wiped down all the surfaces with a 50/50 mix of water and vinegar to get any residual grease and dust off.

Alex was incredibly helpful while I slaved away removing hinges and knobs.

After two coats of primer, things were looking life changing. Every ten seconds I would yell at my sister, “Are you dying right now? This is the greatest day of my life. I can’t believe this is happening!” She was instrumental in helping me get this done. It’s definitely a multi-person project. One of us would go around and edge and get in the nooks and crannies of the doors with a 1″ angled brush and the other would cover all the smooth areas with a trim roller for an even finish.

Here they are after 2 coats of primer and at least 2 coats of paint. We used Behr’s Clear Moon and we love it. I used the original hinges and the knobs I talked about in this post. They are both an antiqued nickel finish. I haven’t gotten drawer pulls yet because finding pulls that are 3 1/2 inches center to center AND in a similar finish is pretty difficult. Lowes and Home Depot both carry 1 drawer pull in that size in the store and neither suited our kitchen.

Can we talk about how I’m really in love with the lines of the cabinets? They aren’t something you see all over the place and I like how architectural they are. I’ve been waiting 2 1/2 years to do this project and now that it’s done it is like a breath of fresh air. It was totally worth the 4 coats and the sanding and having a pulled apart kitchen for 2 weeks. We had to do most of this stuff after work and the doors had to be done in groups of 5-7.

Hello Beautiful.

Hopefully we can get the walls painted a more palatable color (pun intended) sometime soon. For now I’m going to relish how lovely the cabinets are.